Patron Saint
by Thessaly
Summary: There's a new kind of Bohemian skulking around the Heartbreak, one who should have been anywhere but here. Who is St. Jimmy and what's he doing here anyway? Rating mainly for language.
1. Comin' Down Across the Alleyway

**A/N** _Hey hey. It's been a while but even I can't resist a plotbunny when it jumps up and down and yells at me. I'm trying to keep this new-reader friendly (since I can't expect y'all to have read my very old earlier stuff!) but this does slot in with my other WWRY fics. If you'd like a longer introduction to Moxy Fruvous and Bowie and the Band, you might like to read One Flash of Light. Or you might not.  
_

A few minutes into the Band's rehearsal, someone opened the door and yelled, "MOXY! We need him – someone go find him?"

A few minutes later the deputy Head of Security for the Heartbreak Aboveground came jogging up the stairs followed by catcalls and whistles. He ducked into the third-floor studio, a big amazingly messy room with a bank of windows across one wall showing a New London that was still being rebuilt. "Sorry," he said as he ducked around the door. "I was in the workshops. Long way." He pulled a vintage pistol out of his waistband and spun it around. "Look at it! Sweet, huh? It almost works now."

Scaramouche snorted. "Boys and their toys. So apparently there's a duet for tall men only or something."

"Um," said Galileo from behind the piano. "It's – it's a new song. That girl Patti brought the idea from Cali and I thought it would be cool to run it as a duet."

"Oh, god." Moxy winced. He had been – very briefly – the stand-in front man for the Band. He'd always figured it was just because he was the same height as the Dreamer and could hit most of a chord on a piano and most of the high notes in the songs. But now they kept inviting him back to do things, and it was getting embarrassing.

"Don't worry, it's not you," Scaramouche told him. "Macca wants to nail your groupies."

"The amount of chicks that dude gets? It's criminal," said their bassist. "And they're not all hideous. Why you, anyway?"

"Duh, cause he's _fit_," said Meat Loaf. "Heya, sweetie." She bounded across the room, jumped on him, and kissed him. "Ooh, you look even better than you did last time I saw you." One hand snaked around his waist to touch the butt of the pistol in the back of his trousers. "Hon, when you pack iron in skinny jeans you don't wanna hear the _half_ of what I'm thinking."

Scara shifted her guitar and looked at him; fit was one word for it. He was a Statesider Policeman smart enough to defect to the Bohemians eight months before the Rhapsody. There hadn't been a lot of those in the first place, and there were even fewer alive now. And there was basically only one that most people weren't afraid of, and that one was Moxy. It helped that he had carried, through an impressive amount of fuckupage, a quick, infectious smile and a permanent good mood. And yes, it also helped that he was fit. Not just pretty like some of the Heartbreak boys, but _ripped_, a tall, built man with rock-hard abs and toned shoulders who had only gotten better-looking when he ditched his subdued clothes for Boho threads and discovered he had a thing for tanks and tight trousers and iron-toed shitkickers even Scara almost respected. "Meat," she said. "Get a room."

Meat flipped her a birdie, but she let go of Moxy and said, "Gazz, can I pick the next song?"

"Why?" he asked warily. "Which one do you want?"

"I Want Candy!"

Macca snorted and Scara, watching their Statesider, thought he might blush. He'd done that a lot when he first arrived, but Meat had mostly trained him out of it. "No candy for you," she told her friend. "We've got stuff to do."

"Like what?"

"Dunno. Gazz, you wanna actually ,you know, re_hearse_?"

"Here," said the Dreamer, and passed a print-out of the new song over to Moxy. "Awesomely loud, awesomely fast. The chicks are psyched, but they don't have to sing it. Let's give it a run."

"Hells to the yeah!" Meat Loaf raised her sticks and tapped a quick eight; Scara and Macca laid down a couple of "hey suckers, you listening yet?" chords and an urgent, scratchy background texture, rougher than their usual sound. Galileo was standing behind his keyboard, singing them the intro, but he kept his hands raised till they hit the verses hard together, like a suicide falling off a building. Then the chords came out, jarring in with the bass as Moxy yelled into his mike and the Axe yowled in victory.

It was awesomely loud and awesomely fast. During the second instrumental break, Macca yelled, "Fuck it, I'm lost!"

"Who cares," Scara yelled back at him. "More noise!"

Galileo and Moxy faced each other, two tall and lanky men, one blond and one dark and both of them turning triangular faces upwards with eyes half-closed as they rode waves of straight-up adrenaline. They cut to half tempo for the second verse and wobbled again until, out of nowhere, Galileo grabbed control of the song and wrenched it back on track, taking the verses in what Scara called his Power Ballad Voice. He got them to the end, more or less single-handedly. "That's my name!" Scara windmilled one arm again and again until they hit a screaming cadence. "And don't wear it out," Galileo yelled over Meat's final drum flourish.

There was a ringing silence and all five of them realized they were panting.

Macca broke the silence first. "Damn, I'm pumped. Let's do it again!"

"Um, not yet," said Galileo. "Moxy, are you all right?"

Their guest vocalist was staring at his cheat sheet in – something, anyway. Whether it was disgust or fear or just confusion wasn't quite clear. "I'm the patron saint of the denial/With an angel face and a taste for suicidal," Moxy read out loud, in a low voice as though he didn't really believe what he had been singing. He spun on Galileo, with a quick decisiveness that Scara hadn't seen from him before. "Where did you get this?"

Galileo looked confused. "Same place I get everything, I guess. Patti had part of the refrain off a textchip in Cali, and the rest of it sort of came out of my head and then again when I was writing it down. I dunno. They all kind of, um, float out there. I just hear them."

"Do you _know_ what this – No, of course you don't. You really have no idea, do you?" Moxy shook his head. "I can't. Sorry. I can't sing this." The hand holding the paper was shaking a little, and he put it on the piano and pulled away again as though the paper burned. "And if you're smart, you won't do it again either."

The room exploded, but Scara's voice floated over everything else. "It's a great song. What are you on, Moxy, crack?" Then she got a look at him, and she was suddenly, inexplicably, really and deeply freaked out. "Sorry," she said more quickly, as everyone else's voices came down.

Meat was beside him. "You OK, Cowboy?"

He shook his head to clear it. "Yeah, I'm fine. Sorry; it's a superstition, I guess. I used to be on Narco patrol Stateside. Even before the Rhapsody and the cartels took over, they had these weird culture things going on." He twitched again. "Ugh; it's like someone walked over my grave. This song reminds me of the Methlords, that's all."

"Well you don't have to sing it if you don't want to," Galileo said. "Sorry we made you come up here and everything."

"Thanks, though." He paused at the door. "Hey, Dreamer – do me a favour: don't do this one at the mosh tonight?"

"But –"

"Dude, it's gonna be awesome! It's perfect for dancing," Macca insisted.

"Right," said Moxy, more to himself than the Band, then let him out.

The remaining four looked at each other. "Ok, that was weird," said Macca.

"Hmm," said Galileo. "Never mind. We'll run Voodoo Child again."

They did it after all at the Friday night mosh, along with a couple of less hyper new songs and some old favourites. The new song (they were still fighting about what to call it) was even more exhilarating than it had been in rehearsal since they'd worked out most of the rough spots, and the audience was yelling and jumping from the beginning. They didn't do a lot of punk; there were people who did, but the Band had decided more or less unanimously that they were going to stick with a more Classic sound. But all of them, maybe even Galileo, had decided that afternoon that they liked dropping into a messier, louder sound, at least for a little bit.

Later, as Meat and Macca disappeared under groups of devoted fans, Galileo slipped up next to Scara. "Well?" he asked. He was smiling, high on life, eyeliner smudged and his face and arms glittering with drying sweat and whatever that magical star power was that came out whenever he got under lights. "What did you think?"

"Good," she admitted. "Really good. You?"

He shrugged. "I'm not sure. I think – well, it felt like something was a little off but I couldn't place it, you know? Sometimes you can tell and sometimes you can't. The new song was _crazy_ intense but it was almost like it was a little too much. Maybe. Everything after that was…weird."

Scara put her guitar down and went over to him. "Lean down, I got a secret for you." He leaned over. "You're full of shit, Gazza."

"Oh, thanks."

"S'all right. Also," she beckoned again. He signed, but leaned down so she could whisper in his ear. "You're proper fit when you're yelling into that mike."

He looked down at her. "Really?"

"What, you think I'm lying to you?"

"Well…yes, actually."

Scara laughed and slid an arm around his neck for a quick hug and a less quick kiss. They pulled apart reluctantly. "Afterparty?" Galileo asked.

"Oh my god, no. Getting mauled by drunk Bohos is _so_ not my idea of a fun night. I have to rewire this piece of crap," she kicked the guitar, "and then I'll find you, right?"

"I like this idea better and better." Galileo smiled at her, his whole face brightening for a moment. "Who cares about an off night anyway? It's only mosh Friday."

She kissed him again and then sat on the nearest cube to rewire the LEDs in the guitar she'd swapped in for the second half of the show. They were pretty fantastic, but they also weren't connecting right. Still. Most of the people had left by now; it was almost all techies and a handful of groupies plus sister and sister's friend standing in a corner laughing at Moxy. "Our lad's quite the Boho bait, isn't he?" she asked Bowie, the tiny androgynous electrician prying the cover off a speaker. The Band's number one roadie grunted acquiescence and took a drag from the cigarette next to her in a coffee cup.

After a moment she gave a short, hoarse sound that might have been a cough from anyone else. Scara recognized it as a laugh. "Hair," Bowie said and jerked her elbow over at Moxy.

"Huh?" Scara looked over again and realized what the girl was talking about. "Oi, Yankee," she yelled.

He grinned at her over one shoulder. "Oi, Chav."

"Meant to tell you earlier. Hair: what the fuck? Didn't anyone tell you bleached and spiked is _totally_ boyband?"

"I know, gross, right?" Evita said, ruffling her brother's hair. "I keep telling him that but he doesn't listen to me."

Moxy reached up and touched his new hair, now six inches shorter than yesterday, when it had been shoulder-length, feathery, and mostly green. "I like it."

"You're insane."

He bounced across the stage and tugged some of her hair. "Look who's talking. You need a trim, girlfriend."

"Did coming out of the Boho closet turn you into a total fairy or something?" She tugged her hair out of his hand.

The groupies had followed him. Of course. One of them said to Patti (a friend from California, apparently; Scara didn't know her yet, except that everyone said she was polyamorous even by Heartbreak standards), "But if he hit you all the time why didn't you just _leave_?"

"Sweetie, I was hanging with a Methlord posse. You don't walk out on them."

The groupie blinked fake eyelashes so big she'd probably fall over and said, "A what?"

"Methlord." Evita crossed both arms over her chest. "You guys got the Dreamer but over on our side of the ocean, we got a power hole filled with every lonely creepster who could cook E in his kitchen, OK."

"You really haven't heard of them?"

"Not everybody's back online," Scara said. "And I don't think she can read anyway. Can you read, Cassie?"

"Huh?" said the groupie.

"Right, like I said." Scara put the guitar down carefully. "So the cartels are really that bad, huh?"

"Yeah." Patti lit a cigarette. "You wanna do anything over there, you gotta have a friend in with the Methlords."

"Actually, they prefer to be called Entrepreneurs," said Moxy, and snapped the safety back on his gun. Everyone jumped, even Bowie. "They take move into cities, clean them up, hand out a few jobs, then start selling. There's a little turf war, since they usually have to take out whoever was there first. Eventually they expand again, and your jobs aren't as nice anymore but you're still stuck doing whatever the hell you were doing for them."

"All fun and games till you lose your teeth?" Scara asked.

He smiled at her. "Yep."

Patti exhaled slowly and the smoke hung in the air, picked out by the only light that was still on. "How do _you_ know that? You were a policeman."

"Yeah, so I was either chasing you or I was chasing drug pushers." He crossed his arms like his sister, suddenly looking older, less goofy. "You guys were less fucked-up."

"_We_ are less fucked-up than American drug-runners? Jesus," said Scara. "Thanks for sharing, Cowboy. I think I'm going to the party."

Patti was still watching Moxy like she was rethinking him. "Cassie, tell Moxy what you told me about the guy at the mosh."

"Huh?" said the groupie. "Oh, the guy? _That_ guy?"

"Yeah, him."

The girl pushed her bleached extensions over one shoulder. "So, um, there was this guy at the mosh, and he was kinda looking at me funny. And he was _really_ scary. All tall and skinny with, like, punk hair. He…" she chewed on her lip. "He looked _evil_," she said.

Moxy jerked his head round to look at Patti but Evita spoke first. "No," she said. "You're not thinking what I think you're thinking."

"Yeah, I am, actually."

"Fuuuuuck," Evita breathed. "What's he doing here?"

"They wanted to expand," said Moxy. "Why not here? And there was the Band." He glanced over at Scara and she felt like he'd pushed her. "Kind of like an invitation if you believe in that stuff."

"Or he's here for the Triple-E they're making in France; can you _get_ that Stateside?" Patti asked.

"Hell if I know," Moxy told her. "I don't do Narco anymore."

"Hey, hey, confused person here," Scara interrupted them. "Mind telling us what the fuck you're talking about?"

"Oh." Moxy stopped, looked confused. "Well, the Methlords have this – mascot…"

"Doesn't he have a name or something?" Cassie the groupie asked.

Evita opened her mouth, but Moxy grabbed on arm and Patti got the other. "Don't," said Patti. "Not on a stage, hon."

"Oh my god." Evita shivered. "You're right. Ugh. I have to get out of here – who's coming with to the party?"

"Meee," said Cassie.

Scara had put her guitar back in the case. Now she swung it over her shoulder and beckoned Moxy. "You. Explain now."

He looked around the theater and shivered like his sister had. In the fading light, Scara thought he looked a little sick. "I don't want to do it here. I sort of mentioned this earlier today. It's…um…superstitious, but the – mascot – sort of likes the dark and he likes concerts. You know, clubs and theaters and stuff? So talking about him on stage in the dark is kind of going to get his attention."

"Sounds like balls to me," Scara said. "And so does the 'mascot.' Come on, we're going to find that Librarian and Khashoggi – he can keep the monsters away."

Bowie had gone with the afterparty crowd, and it was just the two of them and the ghostlight in the room. It was midsize when it had a mosh crowd, but it felt bigger when it was empty. Scara followed Moxy out through the house. She looked over her shoulder as she pulled the door behind her; the lights were on sensors to go out when they registered no body temperature in the room. Scara knew these ones well enough to know that they should be out by now, and she should be watching a completely dark room with only the tiny bulb that was the antique ghostlight. But these ones were still at the dim twilight they held when people had turned the lights out but not left the room. "Weird," she said. "Lights must be broken or something." Behind the ghostlight, right at the edges of what she couldn't really make out because her eyes weren't adjusted to the gloom, she thought she saw something move. Somebody – it was too tall to be anything but a person – that was a tall, narrow streak of black and white and maybe (unless she was imagining this, because it was complete bollocks) a malevolent glare of black eyes out of the gloom to the left of the ghostlight.

Scara pulled the door shut with a bang. "Bollocks," she said out loud. "Your mascot is a complete load of bollocks. Come on."


	2. King of the Forty Thieves

King of the Forty Thieves

**A/N** _At this point I should probably explain that, yes, this is technically an American Idiot crossover, but since it's _actually_ a WWRY story with one AI character, I'm leaving it here. Deal with it. Also, thank you all for the welcome home – it was really lovely! I hope you all survive the backstory in this chapter…_

The mosh afterparty happened at the bar called Pop's because the Librarian ran it. It was a very old building, with the archaic wood and unfinished bricks still visible where the paint had chipped away and around the holes punched in the walls by drinkers. Most of the party was in the back yard when Bowie arrived, out behind the building in the flagstone courtyard, and all around her she could hear people talking about the new song, in little clips of conversation as though they didn't want it to go on any longer.

"Did you hear?"

"For _serious_. I can't believe they sang _that_..."

"Wait, who's Jimmy anyway?"

"Don't you know?"

"Everyone knows Jimmy, right? I thought everyone did."

"I don't get it!"

"What, you never - ? Even when you were really, _really_ depressed?"

"Or really drunk. I don't remember being that depressed in Virtual High."

"OK, really drunk then.

"You know – dodge the firewall and log onto unprotected sites."

"Jimmy. Called himself Saint Jimmy; I don't even know what a saint _is_."

"Jimmy?"

"Fucking scary."

"Jimmy."

"…that guy…from ChatRoutlette."

"Who the hell is this Jimmy person?"

Evita and Patti were in one corner, leaning close to each other and hissing; Bowie thought they were having a fight, though she couldn't tell for sure. "Really, really fucking bad idea," said Evita as Bowie passed them. She didn't hear Patti's answer.

Bowie didn't like Pop's – not because of Pop, who was a good bloke, but because someone had decorated the entire bar and yard with mirrors and run fairy-lights through the trees. The Bohos loved it because it was shiny, and Bowie was into what you could do to the lighting, but she really, deeply disliked mirrors.

She came face to face with one as she walked through the bar and stopped, wincing, as she caught a full-length view of herself. She was still very small: a slight, skinny girl whose few curves were completely hidden by wide-cut men's jeans and a bulky denim jacket. Her face looked paler than usual above the stone-washed collar and the line of earrings up her left ear glittered in the light. She shifted uncomfortably and her rings flared up in response. She had one on every finger because the glitter of light on metal was fascinating the same way fire was fascinating. She just forgot how…sparkly they were. She winced again. Bowie liked looking at herself almost as little as she liked other people looking at her.

She moved to turn away when someone else stumbled into her reflection. It was Meat Loaf, still in mosh fancy dress, with crimson hotpants and black lace corset and dreadlocks and melting eyeliner. Loads of awesome; far too tall in platform boots. "You made it, hen." She dropped her arm around Bowie's shoulders. Bowie flinched, but Meat didn't move (didn't notice, more like; she was probably immune to Bowie flinching by now). She reached up and ruffled the edges of Bowie's very short pixie cut. "Your hair's coming back, love."

"Fae," Bowie explained. What she meant – and what Meat probably knew – was that Cheeky Fairy had begged and poked and pleaded for Bowie to stop buzzing her head and let her hair grow back in. She'd agreed to grow it some time right after the Rhapsody, and it had returned slowly, lovingly cut and styled and occasionally moussed into a Mohawk by a fascinated Fae.

"Of course," Meat agreed. "It suits you better, with hair." She gave the girl's pale, fine crop a final ruffle and then lurched away. "Have fun tonight, hen. Pops! Where are you, you old bastard: I need drinkies!"

Bowie crossed her arms across her chest and forced herself to look at her hair. Even when she was facing a mirror, she tried to avoid her hair, her face. _Who'd want to look at you?_ her cousin had asked her once, a long time ago, and she was pretty sure he was right. And he would know. She hadn't always had short hair. Back, before The Thing That Happened, when she had been back in Virtual Middle School, thirteen and shyly pretty and properly fed so she almost had curves, her hair had been down to her waist and a pale yellow like new butter; like that it got everyone's attention (including her cousin's, and then The Thing Happened). She'd hacked most of it off when she ran away after the fire, heading out into the wild with nothing but last month's download on her back and a lighter and a pack of black-market cigarettes. With her house – and her cousin – in flames, having less hair had seemed like a good idea.

When she'd finally turned up at the Heartbreak, hungry, exhausted, and part feral, her hair had been feathery and filthy and knotted, just brushing her shoulders. Macca had taken one look at her fierce face and long hair and called Bowie. She still remembered reading Pop's texts about the strange, androgynous person Macca had named her for; the thin boy who was sometimes a girl for no reason his accidental namesake could understand. Except, maybe, that there were days (or decades) where he just didn't want to be a boy. That was something Bowie understood.

Someone had left a tin can on the table next to her that night, and if she tilted it towards the halogen lantern, she could just see her reflection. Bowie had stared at herself in the wavering light and decided she still looked too much like a girl. The best way seemed to be to get rid of the rest of her hair, which she didn't want anyway. She'd already seen, or thought she'd seen, Prince eying her in a way that reminded her of her cousin and she was sure it was the hair. So she had slipped around the piles of snoring Bohos to steal the ratty old razor the boys shared, then taken a pair of shears to the rest of her hair, and buzzed her head when it got too short for scissors. By the time she finished, she finally looked different: her face was clear of everything around it, and her cheekbones stood out sharp against thin face, thin mouth, thin nose. She felt dangerous without her hair; she no longer felt like a girl. And if Bowie was sure about one thing, it was that she didn't want to be a girl. Bad things happened to girls.

And now, five years later, Bowie was finally letting it grow again. She wasn't entirely happy about it, but she wasn't entirely _un_happy about it either. She was – skeptical, but Cheeky Fairy was very persistent. She looked at herself in the mirror again and twitched again, then turned away for the back courtyard and the music. Although it was technically the afterparty and the Band was done for the night, music always happened when you got enough Bohos in one room.

Madonna was sitting on a table and singing while someone pounded out basic chords at a keyboard installed in the outer wall of the building. Bowie edged past the crowd, searched automatically for Cheeky Fairy, and breathed easier when she found the tiny shape of the other girl in the middle of the crowd. Fae was easy to find today; she was wearing a sparkling tutu and had a tiara in her tangled hair that caught the light the way the mirrors did. She was smiling, and just be seeing her, Bowie felt that the world had calmed down. Fae was here and Fae was whole and Fae was smiling and that was all good. She retreated to a shadowy corner and fidgeted a fag out of her front pocket.

She had gone through a whole cigarette before she noticed she had company. He was sitting on her right and dressed entirely in black, and she wasn't fully aware of him until she lit her second and a thin, spidery hand slid into her field of vision. "Got a light?" he asked in a husky voice with a slightly hissing undertone, like bad feedback or static on a broken mike.

Bowie turned her head to watch him as the spark from her lighter flared over a pale, emaciated face. The heavy curve of jet eyeshadow over sunken eyes made parts of his face invisible, but the wavering flick of fire in Bowie's hand lit a malicious little spark somewhere deep in the pits of his eyes. His head was half shaved, a wing of black hair curving down to his chin and shadowing the farther half of his face. Then the lighter went out again, and he was fully back in the dark, sitting silently beside her. Bowie lit her own cigarette and exhaled slowly. Everyone knew him. Everyone was talking about him, and he had turned up next to her, just like he turned up in your ChatRoulette window when you weren't looking for him. It figured he'd end up here. "Jimmy," she said.

There was a faint sound from beside her that might have been assent. "Smart girl. I don't remember you, though; who the hell are you?"

Bowie blew a smoke ring.

"I know everybody here," he told her. He smoked like she did: quickly, furtively, holding the cigarette close just in case. He gestured up at the stage. "I know her."

Bowie followed the line of his hand and realized with a shock like being kicked that "her" was Fae, who was sitting at the keyboard in her princess tutu and tiara, baggy purple gloves pulled up to her elbows, flushed and singing in that strange, haunting little girl voice of hers. "I don't know where to go, can't do it alone/I've tried and I don't know why."

Bowie felt her heart twist a little, turn over. He knew her? _How_ did he know her? Bowie knew that, back before That Thing Happened, when boys were running after Bowie, Fae was running after boys. All right, yeah, all right. But still. Had she been running after _Jimmy_?

"But I don't know you," Jimmy continued. He turned his head, scrutinized Bowie for a moment, then reached out his free hand and gripped her chin. She tried to pull back, but he was holding her too tightly, and Bowie slapped one hand up to grab his wrist. It was so thin she could almost wrap her fingers around it; she felt like she was grabbing something inhuman, electronic – like his wrists were made of wires, jerry-rigged up to fiberoptic eyes and an LED display behind his face.

"Break your hand," she warned him. "Ask Prince."

"Fuck Prince," Jimmy told her. "I have; you might not like it, though. You won't break my hand, though," he added. "Cause I've just remembered who you are." He smiled, showing a line of destroyed teeth. "Lulu. Lulu-Louisa. Louisa-at-the-Kendalls. I do remember you."

Bowie froze, stuck awkwardly holding onto Jimmy's emaciated wrist and leaning stiffly at an angle that made her back ache. No one had called her Lulu in years. Maybe it's my hair, she thought, panicked; as though the return of her hair was the return of That Thing That Happened. "Not Lulu anymore," she told him.

"Of course you are. You can't just _stop_ being someone because you change your name or your login or your account or whatever. You stay _you_." He leaned forward until their faces were almost touching. "You stay Lulu. You stay Lulu-Louisa, that-girl-with-the-hair, don't you? You know you do, you tacky thing." Jimmy gave her chin a tug, enough to pull her forward, off balance, so that their mouths touched and he could give her a furious, scalding-hot-water kiss that tasted like smoke. His other hand snaked up under the loose edge of her jacket, close enough to give her a good grope. He let go of her as quickly as he'd grabbed her. "Not sure if you're a boy or a girl?" Jimmy whispered as he stood up. He was laughing at her, and Bowie wanted to jump up, hit him, kick him, douse him in gasoline and throw the lighter at him – but she couldn't move because her mouth still tasted like old smoke and he was looking at her with those dangerous painted black eyes. "Be good, rebel," he told her. "I'm going to go introduce myself to your friend." One hand slipped into his pocket. "Got a present for her. A real dope one, you know?" He waved with the free hand, wobbling the fingers. "Bye bye, rebel!"

And then he was gone into the crowd of dancing bodies, and Bowie was finally able to move. She jumped to her feet and realized that she was too short to see anything and too small to make it there in time to rescue Fae from whatever Jimmy was bringing her.

Bowie lit another cigarette and smoked it furiously.

* * *

Khashoggi had an office. It seemed sort of ridiculous to a lot of people, but he needed somewhere to keep things, including a truly massive bay of computers that ranged from the vintage to the so-new-you've-never-seen-it. He was in there when Scara arrived, dragging a reluctant Moxy behind her. She banged the door just to make the Commander jump and then leaned against it. "Right," she said. "Statesider Methlords. Go."

Khashoggi stared at her. People did that a lot, but his stares said more than "Oh, God, not again" or "What's she _on_?" or "She'slookingatmeHELP." Khashoggi switched his stare over to Moxy and then back to Scara again. "It's a large field," he said cautiously. "Where would you like me to start?"

"Creeptastic death mascot would be nice."

"And specifics would be helpful."

"All right, fine. I'd say probably 188, 193 cm, calls himself St. Jimmy. A lot people smart, a little book smart – sounds smart if you're not paying attention, right? Likes fucking with people, hates people fucking with him. Wears black and probably safety pins. Skulks in dark corners and stares at groupies like they're dinner. Can you tell me the things that _aren't_ obvious?"

Khashoggi's stare held an entire, withering lecture, and Moxy Fruvous turned silently to face the wall and dropped his forehead against it twice. "How," he demanded tiredly, "do you know that?"

"Did you not _hear_ the new song? It's all in there."

"And, of course, she's met him before." Khashoggi leaned back in his chair. He was smiling. It was _really_ disturbing. "Moxy, didn't she tell you that she's Screaming Sally of FourChan211; she dealt with Jimmy in high school."

Moxy's look here was eloquent too – except, unlike Khashoggi's, it was also profane. "_You_'_re_ Screaming Sally? The mod that uploaded that virus? You must have been like eighteen."

"Sixteen," Scara muttered.

"My god, you're a legend. To hell with the Dreamer." Moxy shook his head. "I wasted more time than I ever wanted to dealing with the Screamer outbreak when it happened – and that was _you_? God."

The Commander swiveled, zoomed in on one of his computers to check something, then turned back to face them. "St. Jimmy wasn't on our screens until the end. You will have to start."

"Um, OK." Scara tried to find the right place to start. She didn't like Khashoggi; had never and still didn't. He made her feel small and fake and phony, and she was pretty sure she'd locked down all her net activities in high school to a point where only the most determined hackers could get through, so how did the Commander know about _that_? Plus he made her nervous, even when – like now – she thought he might be praising her.

"I just knew him as one of the trolls on the dodgy comms. There were a lot of them, and we mostly left them alone, because who the hell wants noobs who can't look after themselves on 211 anyway. But they told us to keep an eye on him, since sometimes you did get nutters who needed to be taken care of. He was sort of whatever on 211, and I'd seen him a few times on Twitter Tube, lurking in dark corners , but what we all heard was that he was a PlanetRoulette god. He had a reputation there, kind of mythical: this ghost that turned up on your window to tell you that you were fat, but only on the days when you were really unhappy and only at really strange times, like 4 AM." Scara shrugged. "But they said that about a lot of people. Here's where it gets weird; the rumour was, he liked to mess around with people – pick them off from the fringes. It usually worked something like this: say you're an unhappy teen about ten years ago. You post to your journal and your profile that some sucky thing happened, and then you explain it on the boards, have a bit of a moan, and maybe go looking for porn or free downloads on 211. If you do that long enough, user StJimmymynamehere starts following your updates. Sometimes it was straight-up Trolling: you just had this clown harassing you every time you logged on and of course if you gave him enough time he hacked your passwords and got into your accounts. Like a virus with a nasty sense of humour, right. Sometimes it was friendly, though; the people who were out after dark on 211 found someone to hang out with. That's it, really. We had his name flagged, but just the same way we'd flagged FatBastard, xxxswEEtiExxx, Riva_Lane, and a couple of other people." She shrugged. "Business as usual. He was only scary because he was kind of insane."

"Interesting." Khashoggi swiveled in his chair. "As I said, we only became aware of him late in the game, about a year before the Rhapsody. We'd noticed him on the comms as well, and we'd noticed that his friends ended badly. We had kids disappear, flunk out of school, overdose; we had suicides and a couple of attempted murders. He was bad news, but only as bad as the rest of the Trolls, and god knows we had suicides and murders for other reasons as well."

"So where does a Roulette freak turn into a Methlord mascot?" Scara asked.

"We don't know, exactly. All we know is that one of the Narco Units had linked him to the Stateside drug trade a few years ago, and there were suggestions that he was tracking the kids with problems."

"Like the Police did."

He sighed. "_Yes_, like the Police did. The name popped up again after the Rhapsody as someone working with the Entrepreneurs Stateside. At the time we thought it was a different person. The username had been registered for a long time, and it's quite normal to have copy-cat usernames. We thought it was someone trying to sound dangerous, but hearing you now makes me wonder if it wasn't the same person. He's always been…interested in the young."

Scara shivered. "Right. Well, the groupies think he's here now." She wasn't going to say anything about the shadow by the ghost light – not to Khashoggi.

Khashoggi switched his intent look to Moxy. "How did that happen?"

"Like I know." Moxy leaned on the corner of the table. "Swear to god, I have no idea. I wish I did. I used to work Narco, back Stateside. Jimmy was usually a couple of months ahead of the Methlords, and when the moved in most of the target kids were primed to be drugged out of their minds or so downtrodden that they wanted in on the gangs. He's a pusher, he's a seller, he's –" Moxy stopped, shrugged, lifted both his hands and dropped them.

"The son of a bitch and Edgar Allan Poe?" Scara suggested.

"If I knew who that was, probably yes," said Moxy. He sounded uncharacteristically annoyed. "The guy's a mess, and he's the last person I want on my turf right now."

"Hmm," said Khashoggi. "I see your point."

"I don't." Khashoggi reached out and grabbed her hand, flipping it over so the skin of her inner arm glowed under the lights. "So what? There's not anything to see," Scara said, confused.

"Well, not for _you_." Khashoggi let go of her wrist. "Think about it. You live in a community of casual drug users with a strong inclination to self-destruction. Do you really think this is the place you want St. Jimmy?" He sighed and pushed both hands over his face. "Christ, it's late. We talk about this in the morning, when everyone is awake."

"Afternoon, then," said Moxy, "because I, for one, do not intend to be awake in the morning."

Moxy left; Scara stayed, leaning against a desk and staring at one of the machines. Khashoggi, catching a look at her sidelit from a monitor thought she had the dreamy blink of an ex-addict; it was the sort of face he'd caught on Macca when they were getting rid of a dope stash, or Meat when she watched Moxy. He'd forgotten Scaramouche was a hacker. "Hey," she said, roused from whatever she was thinking. "Do you have something that runs Linux?"

He gestured to one of the old models on the right-hand side of the room. "That one should be all right. It's on the network; is that a problem."

She flashed him a grudging smile over one shoulder, with a tiny flicker of excitement that reminded him what the Dreamer saw in this untidy, slovenly, and offensive teenage girl. "Bloody perfect," she said, and dropped into the chair, tapping her way into the net like a master – which of course she was.

Khashoggi booted up one of his archive machines and began the laborious work of finding what he was looking for. He had most of his SP records backed up here, painstakingly retrieved by tiny, intricate programmes over the last year and a half. He had a number of other things backed up on this machine as well, and it took some time to find it all, reading and sifting and sorting anything he could find on the American Methlords and a hacker-Troll with a penchant for ChatRoulette.

They worked together in silence broken only by the clicking of keys and the buzz of the mainframe. When someone opened the door, Khashoggi started. Scaramouche, as far as he could tell, barely noticed; she was floating somewhere on the nets, up to her neck in code and conducting what looked like seven IM conversations while she did whatever she was doing. The smell of perfume distracted him, and he turned the chair to look at Meat Loaf, who had pranced in, still dressed in mosh clothes. "I have two cups of coffee and what used to be a fifth of rye," she announced. "And it's 5 AM."

"Where's the third cup of coffee?" Scara asked without looking around.

"I drank half of his," Meat said cheerfully. She walked over and put a the full cup next to Scara's elbow. "Here you are, darling. Now go to bed."

"Can't. Busy."

Meat crossed the room again and draped herself over the back of Khashoggi's chair – and Khashoggi. Her hair tickled his ear and he could smell alcohol on the breath whisking past his ear. "What are you doing?"

"Thinking." One of her hands crawled over his shoulder and began to unbutton his shirt. He reached up and held her wrist, very gently. "You're so coordinated when you're smashed."

"And don't you know it?" She leaned farther forward, craning around to kiss him. Her mouth tasted distractingly, achingly familiar, as though somehow burnt sugar and stale lipstick and the dregs of distillation had become sunk into his senses. "I got better things for you to think about."

"Get a room." Scaramouche hadn't turned around. "Didn't you two split up?"

"Yes," said Khashoggi.

"Not really," said Meat.

"Scaramouche has accused me on numerous occasions of waiting in line for mercy jerks," Khashoggi explained. "I think she disapproves of casual sex."

"When _you're_ in line, it's hardly a mercy job," Meat said. "And she could use some good, messy, casual sex. Unwind, you know." She was playing with his hair now. It was extremely distracting.

"Getting laid is not the answer to everything."

"It is if you use rubbers, you cow," said Meat cheerfully.

Khashoggi was watching Scara, so he saw her back tense up as the joke went home, and he saw how she sat just a little straighter, and her head tilted forward with a little more aggression. He gave Meat's wrist a squeeze. "I take it I've finally reached the top of your very exclusive waiting list? Good. Let's go back to mine."

"Mine's closer."

"Yours is filthy. We're going to mine so we can have good coffee in the morning." He stood up and swung one of her arms over his shoulders. Anyone who spent enough time with Meat knew how to deal with her when she was part drunk and horny.

* * *

Galileo waited. He knew already that this was a stupid idea; Scara would come when and if she wanted to and there was nothing he could do to change her mind. He was just killing time, sitting in the curve of the window sill in the dark, noodling with one of the crappier guitars because he needed something to do with his hands.

The room was messy, his things mixed with hers so completely that it was probably impossible to really separate them again. He sometimes thought that they shared space more than a room or a bed, and that shared space had nothing to do with shared ideas or thoughts. He would have thought that what they had done together in the last two years: had a lot of good sex, made a baby, lost a baby, saved the world, were the sorts of things that brought people closer together. But instead there was a buffer wall there, something not quite tangible that divided Gazz from Scara in a way he didn't understand, except that she had gone away for a while, and come back, and now they were in the same space again. But he wasn't sure they were exactly _together_.

When she did come in, she looked exhausted. Galileo looked at her from the window and put the guitar down, but remained where he was. He wasn't sure what he was supposed to stay that didn't sound stupid, or whipped, or needy. Scara glanced up at him and away, then shucked off her shoes and corset and dropped onto the nest of disorganized blankets on their mattress and went straight to sleep. He stared down at her, and the streetlights glimmering off her hair and the pale smooth curve of one shoulder, the edge of her neck. She slept on her stomach, one knee drawn up and her arms thrown out in an inelegant sprawl. She'd take up the whole bed if he let her. Scara wasn't supposed to be beautiful; he wasn't supposed to be in love with her. His arms slid back into their very old safely position, wrapped tight around his stomach with the palms of his hands flat against his inner arms where they rubbed the old scar lines.

"There was something I was supposed to say, wasn't there?" he asked, quietly. "Something at some point today, where I was supposed to do something so this evening didn't end with you asleep and me sitting on the windowsill?" He felt, deeply and severely, that he had done something wrong somewhere; that he was the wrong person in the wrong skin. "You were happy, weren't you? You _kissed_ me – you haven't done that in ages. What happened since the mosh?"

The fact that there was no answer proved that she was asleep, since Scara would undoubtedly have had an answer to that. Galileo turned away from her and rested his head against the reinforced plastic of the window, staring out into the darkness. It was practically morning, but there were still people down there: a group of four careened down the street with their arms linked together sharing a cone of chips. A couple was making out in the shadows of the buildings at the corner; and there were two figures just outside the circle of one of the lights, nearly under the window. They were talking, he thought, but then he saw the hands go out, touch, return to pockets, repeat the exchange. The one in white moved away first, and the height and the pink-striped yellow hair and the stupid white leather jacket with a bike on the back made it clear that it was Big Macca. Galileo squinted at the other person, still loitering in the shadows. He didn't know the other man. As though the man in the street had heard the Dreamer thinking, he finally moved, walking into the streetlight and looking up at the window as he passed. Galileo stared down at him, a half-familiar figure who should have been anywhere but walking the night streets of London. Someone very tall and very thin, with long pale arms and a half-shaved scalp, who looked up at Galileo with intent, unblinking dark eyes as he passed and slowly, mockingly, raised one arm in an unmistakable flip-off.

Galileo turned away and slid off the window sill and flopped down on the bed beside his chick (although he was starting to think he was her bloke – when she wanted him). "What's wrong with me?" he asked out loud, linking his hands behind his head and staring at the ceiling. "Am I supposed to be a badarse with a bad haircut?"

He didn't expect an answer, but beside him Scara turned over blindly, flopping one arm over his stomach. "No. You're supposed to be who you are. And you already have a bad haircut."

"What?"

But she was asleep for good.

"Fuck," said the Dreamer, very quietly. "That's really not helpful."


End file.
